As the Iran war stretches into its fourth month, the ripple effects are still being felt across the globe. So far, upwards of 3,000 people have died in Iran alone, with thousands dead in Lebannon, and hundreds of casualties in other countries in the region. The economic shock has also rippled across the world, driving up the cost of fuel and other goods.
Nonetheless, some U.S. veterans are finding hope in the widespread opposition to the war, which marks a sea change from previous wars.
Aaron Hughes, an Iraq war veteran and a Chicago organizer for About Face: Veterans Against the War, told Salon that the beginning of the Iran war brought with it a flood of emotions including despair and depression, stemming from the fact that, despite his best efforts and the efforts of veterans like him, the country had once again found itself embroiled in another war.
“When things were beginning, for myself, I was having a hard time sleeping. The disconnect between our military actions and our daily lives is profound,” Hughes said. “It’s hard to bridge that in any real concrete way.”
Since returning from Iraq in 2006, Hughes has become a vocal anti-war activist and artist, sharing his experience and helping to organize other veterans as well. Over the years, Hughes said, the activity and interest in About Face waned, as the Iraq war and the occupation of Afghanistan fell out of the headlines. Interest in the anti-war veterans organization, however, started ticking up again as Israel ramped up the war in Gaza with U.S. support.
Hughes pointed to the self-immolation of Aaron Bushnell, a 25-year-old Air Force serviceman who in Freburary of 2024 lit himself on fire outside the Israeli embassy in Washington, D.C., as a key turning point for many of the people involved in About Face today. Trump’s return to office, Hughes said, further pushed many veterans to action, first in response to his deployment of the National Guard and Marines to American cities, the military’s action in Venezuela and then in response to the war in Iran.
Hughes said that the United States has not yet had the reckoning with its history of militarism that he’s been pushing for for all these years. He does feel, however, like the culture is changing both among the American public and members of the military.
“People are beginning to see the costs of militarization, and that is a hopeful sign. We don’t know how far it’s going to go, but at least it seems to be waking up some people.”
“Most veterans feel really alone when they’re questioning their orders, when they’re frustrated inside their unit. They don’t know where to turn. They feel like they’re all by themselves. And even when you get out, and you’re like, ‘Well, I’m done with that machine, but like I’m going to move on with my life,’ all of that experience kind of sits with you and makes it harder to just get on with your life,” Hughes said. “What gives me hope is that there is this legacy of veterans resisting and fighting back, fighting for freedom, fighting for democracy, and fighting for justice, and I think that I didn’t know about that legacy when I was in the military.”
“When we were organizing the ‘60s and ‘70s, we had this unrealistic belief that we were the first generation of war veterans during a war to come home and fight against that war, that’s the first time that ever happened, and we considered that to be our strength” Miller said. “We thought, ‘Okay, we’re going to stop wars altogether, because this is the first time veterans are coming home and saying our war is wrong.’
Miller said he believes that decades of anti-war activism has impacted the attitudes of the American people, despite the inclination of American leaders like Trump to start new wars.
“People are beginning to see the costs of militarization, and that is a hopeful sign. We don’t know how far it’s going to go, but at least it seems to be waking up some people to what the reality has been all these years,” Miller said. “And the fact that veterans are coming home and organizing against their war, the Iraq and Afghan veterans are now helping veterans coming home from Iran, or people who are still in the military, and now realizing maybe they shouldn’t be there anymore. They’re helping them to get out.”
With that being said, Hughes and Miller are not representative of all veterans. John Byrnes, the strategic director of the Concerned Veterans for America, a large and conservative-leaning veterans organization, said that even among the veterans he interacts with on a daily basis, opinions on the war are sharply divided.
Byrnes said that many older veterans agree with Trump, who has argued that the Iran attack was necessary and that other presidents had been putting it off. Many veterans, Byrnes said, have also expressed serious concern about the war, even if they’re not fundamentally opposed to its purported aims. For his part, Byrnes said he thinks that if there was a solid case for the war, Trump would have made it to Congress.
“I personally think this was a bad idea, and I think that if there was a case to go to war with Iran, that president had, based on intelligence, that the right way to do that in the United States is to go through the U.S. Congress and get a declaration of war or authorization for use of military force,” Byrnes said.
In general, Byrnes said, he sees veterans as having very similar opinions about the Iran war as the American public at large. From the outset, the Iran war was broadly unpopular, and most polling now puts the proportion of Americans who support the war around 35%, with the proportion who oppose being around 60%.
“There are a lot of younger veterans who don’t like the idea of wiping a civilization off the map. And again, having served in the military, there can be this view that the military is a giant right-leaning organization … but it’s still a politically diverse organization,” Byrnes said. “It reflects America in a lot of ways, and same with those who have served. There are plenty of veterans who think this is a terrible idea, who think this is a very dangerous situation, and who certainly would not like to see America’s power and military forces squandered on a goal that could be solved diplomatically.”
There are signs, aside from polling, that show that both the American public and service members are changing the way they think about the United States’ military because of the Iran war. Mike Prysner, the executive director of the Center on Conscience and War, a group that provides legal support and counsel for conscientious objectors, told Salon that they have seen a huge increase in interest.
“Of the people that have called us over the war, over 100 have officially started the conscientious object process with us, which is about double the number of cases we would handle in a given year, and that number is pretty much just from March and April,” Prysner said.
Many people who may be opposed to the war, Prysner explained, also choose not to seek conscientious objector status, for a variety of reasons, including the fact that the process is lengthy and it’s often easier for someone to simply finish their service in the military.
Kelly Dougherty, an Iraq war veteran and the counseling director for the center, told Salon that there have been many incidents during Trump’s second term that service members have cited as their point of crystallization, or the moment they became opposed to all war.
“Most people are questioning war and their own complicity in it for a while before that moment happens. That includes what has been happening in Gaza. That includes learning about U.S. history and learning about different wars and different war crimes. What happened with the U.S. kidnapping [Venezuelan President Nicolás] Maduro, with bombing fishing boats in the Caribbean,” Dougherty said. “All of these things that have happened both in the recent past, but also in distant history, contribute to people coming to their opposition to war.”
For Hughes and Miller, the uptick in conscientious objectors is an optimistic note, because it’s a sign that there is a broader awareness of the impacts of the military on the world spreading among current service members, even if conscientious objectors are only a small fraction of service members.
“We, as veterans, are going to keep organizing, and we’re going to come back again and again and again, until our country has a reckoning with our failed legacy of militarism,” Hughes said. “Until we have that reckoning, we’re gonna keep speaking out, we’re gonna keep organizing.”